I have been analyzing the “shutdown†as politics as usual, which is to say, a fake conflict between the inner party and the outer party to give the appearance of democracy. I predicted the Republicans would roll over and wet themselves in a week.
It has now been two weeks.
I still think it is politics as usual, but the increasingly strident reaction of the inner party organs indicates that some of them are seeing it as politics for real. “Outside In†is therefore analyzing it as a real conflict.
In the Game of Chicken, the side that can most convincingly signal madness wins, so when the inner party call the Tea Party crazy, they are preparing to lose. Or they could be preparing to ship the Tea Party off to concentration camps, after the fashion of Golden Dawn.
Two cars drive at each other at high speed down the middle of the road. The guy who swerves loses.  In the Republican car, the establishment, the outer party, is in the driver’s seat, and wants to swerve. The Tea Party is in the passenger seat, but is fighting for the wheel.
Given the commotion in the Republican car, the Democrat car would be well advised to swerve. Or they could shoot the guy in the passenger seat.
I still think this is going to end with the outer party driving the Republican car off the road, but some elements of the inner party are starting to doubt it.
Obama has been thinking about halting EBT payments in the event that the debt limit is not raised. That is the responsible thing to do. If he does not pay EBT, he can honor the debt limit, pay the interest on government bonds, and pay the army. What is not to like? Could any Tea Partier disagree? If the government is going to prioritize, it has to shut down something big and simple. Most government expenditures take years to halt, but we have seen that EBT cards can just be turned off with a switch. A sudden absence of blacks, indios and morbidly obese heavily tattooed women each with nine screaming demon spawn in tow, ensues at shopping centers. Instant overnight solution to the deficit.
The Tea Party would be fine with such a solution. With such a solution in place, why raise the debt limit ever again?
“Oh no, the demon spawn are starving. To save the demon spawn, arrest the Tea Party.â€
I rather like that scenario, since really I would like us to get the collapse over with, rather than endless decline. But the Republican establishment driving the car into the ditch seems more likely.
Very interesting. I’ve been wondering what’s going on.
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“and pay the army”.
Which Army? The DC EBT?
The Army Obama needs to feed and is shrieking it’s the end of the world is facing a 40% cut if expenditures = revenues. The difference between Walmart EBT and DC EBT is the latter was disciplined enough to hold out for the Big Payoff. The former were the cool kids in High School.
We pay for both. They mirror each other in character.
SNAP/EBT is $75 Billion. That’s barely a week for the Feds.
OTOH it’s good for riots. Riots are merely a political weapon.
It worked…so far once. The decent people stood there, the decent police stood there…Donee nullo termino sunt. Sic… Ita opus viri dura.
SNAP is only a month and a half of deficit, but if EBT is only 75 billion, does not make sense that when the system is down for a day, the shops empty of underclass.
In addition to SNAP, EBT also includes TANF and Refugee benefits and a raft of other programs. Our beloved Boston Bombers were getting refugee benefits through their EBT.
When EBT shuts down, the underclass and coloreds go away. That has to be a lot more than 75 billion.
In California, by and large, the underclass does not work, and when they hit the shops, they use their EBT cards. That has to be some serious money, though some of that, perhaps most of that, is state payments rather than federal. (Though a lot of state payments are in fact federal payments)
You may well be correct that stopping EBT would not balance the budget, seventy five billion being about one eighth of the deficit, but there is a sneaky tendency to hide the extent of welfare. Stopping EBT stops a lot more than SNAP, how much more I do not know.
Jim is correct. SNAP is $75 bil, but EBT is the entire gamut of EBT eligible benefits that the underclass receives. SNAP is the benefit that can be only used on SNAP eligible foods. The rest is cash through a myriad of programs.
SHould’ve let the EBT crowd get screwed over and pitch as big of a fat as obese people can throw on national television. With the GOP being associated with whites, any rainbow EBT riots would’ve been associated with the left. An unruly mob that goes nuts at the slightest misfortune would have been PR the GOP can never buy. Idiots.
Riots are good for us in the age of cell phone cameras and WorldStarHipHop. In the past, Black riots worked for proggies because they were the only ones pointing the cameras, and they chose the narrative.
What if there was endless security camera footage of Blacks looting and murdering?
The proggies were barely able to keep a lid on perceptions of Katrina, which was almost ten years ago. There just weren’t quite enough cameras around.
So yeah, here’s to hoping the next time EBT shuts down, it shuts down for at least a week, and the high-aggression, low-IQ, low-time-preference Blacks go out and start looting.
It will be interesting to see how riots come out in a world where everyone carries a video camera at all times, and where whites are considerably better armed than they were during the last round of rioting.
The video camera is mightier than the bullet, but they are both mighty.
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